Teen's run-in with bamboo stick spotlights impalement injuries

(CBS) A Virginia teen learned a sharp lesson about the dangers of even make-believe combat after being impaled on a sharpened bamboo stick he had been wielding as a ninja weapon.

Dez Heal, a 13-year-old from Lynchburg, survived to tell the tale after he skewered his neck with the stick in a fall while playing with friends, WSET TV reported.

"He was screaming and you could hear it in his voice that he was freaked out," Dez's friend Nicholas Blencowe told the station.

Dez's father called 911, and doctors at the University of Virginia Medical Center successfully removed the stick, which went in the right side of the boy's neck. It took about five hours to remove the stick, and Dez was sweating it the whole time.

"I'm thinking that I might pass out, maybe during the surgery when they pull it out, it might start gushing, and they might not be able to save me," he told the station.

Dez's fear was a reasonable one. Doctors have to be very careful when removing impaled objects from the neck or trunk to avoid "rapid exsanguination," says the website of the National Center for Emergency Medicine Informatics.

Exsanguination? That's doctor-speak for bleeding to death.

The circumstances of Dez's injury may have been unusual, but doctors say impalement injuries are not particularly rare. Dr. Chris Thompson, an emergency room doctor in Lynchburg, told the station he frequently sees similar injuries. Knives are common, he said, and "sticks has to be number two."

What if you or someone you love is impaled? "It sounds counterintuitive, but it's important to leave the object in place," Dr. Abi Mehrotra, assistant medical director at the University of North Carolina Department of Emergency Medicine, told ABC News. "You don't know what the damage is to the structure underneath. The object may be stopping the bleeding that may be happening."

As for Dez, he said the incident had taught him an important lesson.

"Don't play with sticks a lot."